Checkered Past
by Dhrelva
Summary: Jack's sins catch up to him. Set between seasons 2 and 3.
1. The End

Title: Checkered Past  
  
Summary: Jack's sins catch up to him. Set between seasons 2 and 3.  
  
Spoilers: through the first episode of season 3.  
  
Disclaimer: Alias and associated characters obviously aren't mine. ABC and JJ Abrams hold that honour.  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Season 3; So I contacted the one person I believed I could trust, given the circumstances...your mother. At the time, she was number 6 on the CIA's most wanted list.(Jack)  
  
Season 2; The death of a CIA agent draws unwanted attention and focus. When it happens, the safest recourse is to say nothing... ever. (Jack)  
  
Season 1; I want you to stop. I hear your concerns and I will choose how to respond to them myself. You're a good agent, Jack, but lately, I find your methods reprehensible. If I hear of one more instance of you acting off the book, you're done. (Devlin)  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Jack Bristow sat in the same glass cage that had once housed his wife, listening to the buzzers sound and the bars lift out of the way of approaching footsteps. In the last few months of Irina's captivity, ever since India, he had spent nearly a cummulative three weeks locked inside here with her, discussing missions and brainstorming over chinese as they had done before he knew she was a KGB spy. That could be verified by video, prison visitor logs, and CIA witnesses. There was no disputing it. The prosecution had one particularly damning clip where he and Irina were laughing over some joke or memory. Hell, there were probably dozens of such instances in the security footage archives of this cell.  
  
There was only one where they'd touched, where they had almost thought about kissing, but he had destroyed that tape long before now.  
  
Dr. Barnett's sessions were being used against him as well. He'd long since stopped thinking of Irina as Laura, but Barnett had an audio tape of him slipping and calling her by his wife's name. He wasn't sure if the misconception would help or hinder his case. Laura wasn't number six on the CIA's most wanted list. Irina was. Not that it mattered. The cell tapes had him telling Irina that they were still married.  
  
Even then, when he thought he had hated her, he'd made no efforts to even look into annulling the marriage. At the time, he'd rationalized the lapse as a reminder of the follies of trust. A masochistic desire rub salt into his failure. Jack Bristow had married a KGB spy. Was still married to a terrorist. He had thought of it as punishment for his sins. He believed he deserved it whenever Kendall looked at him with derision and said with his eyes, "You might think you know what's going on better than I do, but iyou/i were the one who married her."  
  
At the time, he had never once thought it might prove expedient to use his marital status to avoid answering questions about her location. Since taking up residence in the cell he had once visited so frequently, he'd parroted the law that a man is not required to jeopardize his wife more times than he could count.  
  
That, too, would be used against him.  
  
"Jack." Jack looked up to see Director Devlin standing on the other side of the glass. He made no move to stand or otherwise acknowledge his visitor. The director sighed and leaned against the wall, assuming a falsely casual posture. This interview was anything but casual. "Jack, if you go to trial, you will be found guilty of being a traitor to this country."   
  
Jack knew that. It wasn't entirely Irina's fault either. Devlin's voice carried with it the reminder of the many times Jack was warned about his rogue behaviour. And willfully disregarded it. "I was trying to help Sydney," he repeated his only defense, then and now. It made no more impact this time than it had the countless other times he delivered it.  
  
Devlin sighed and shook his head. "Sydney's dead, Jack." Jack could tell that he believed Jack was suffering from some sort of mental breakdown. If their places were reversed, Jack knew he would have believed the same. He looked away, aware he had already lost.  
  
"What would you have me do?" he asked, looking at the floor rather than the director. "My record is checkered at best. I married a KGB agent, spent six months in solitary under suspicion of being her accomplice, then I had three months in detox after two years of alcoholism. I worked for Sloane until I turned double, I murdered Hadlaki and stole government property. I set up the explosives in Madagascar to frame my wife, I let Irina escape in Panama, and now you have surveillance footage of me and my wife meeting in Egypt. All of this is a matter of irecord/i. Add in the rumours that my daughter's death has unhinged my mental balance, and -" Jack shook his head, then looked up to met Devlin's carefully closed expression. "I'm not a traitor, you know that. But all evidence points to the contrary. I'm not blind, I see that perfectly well."   
  
"Plead guilty."  
  
That sparked Jack out of his calm and he shot to his feet, glaring impending, if impossible, violence at Devlin through the cell's transparent wall. "I am not a traitor! Damnit, Ben,I thought we were friends once!"   
  
"Then plead guilty to 'resisting authority', Jack." The muscles of Devlin's face twitched enough to give away a surpressed humourless smile. "God knows you commit that on a daily basis."  
  
Jack pressed his lips together, a facial expression Jack knew Devlin could interpret either as anger or amusement. He wasn't sure which he was feeling himself. "What's the maximum sentence for a habitual offender of that?" His question's tone was as ambiguous as his expression.  
  
"Indefinite solitary confinement."  
  
Jack turned toward the the cell's 'window'. He'd been in solitary before. He had no desire to return.  
  
"Jack."  
  
Jack ignored him.  
  
"You'll get the death penalty otherwise."  
  
Jack stood very still and silent for a long time, his back to his visitor. "I'll think about it," he agreed quietly, already knowing he'd do it. As long as he wasn't dead, there was always a chance he'd be able to get out and find Sydney. There was no way he would be found innocent. He'd only avoided prison for the Madagascar incident because of Sydney's misinformation. Associating with the CIA's sixth most wanted was far worse in the NSC's opinion.  
  
"I'll come for your decision tomorrow," Devlin promised. Jack knew by his tone that he already knew Jack's answer, too.  
  
As the first set of bars began to raise, signalling Devlin's departure, Jack raised his voice to call after him, though he otherwise made no movement. "Don't bother. Set it up." 


	2. The Middle: Jack

Title: Checkered Past  
  
Summary: Jack's sins catch up to him. Set between seasons 2 and 3.  
  
Spoilers: through the first episode of season 3.  
  
Disclaimer: Alias and associated characters obviously aren't mine. ABC and JJ Abrams hold that honour.  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Season 3; She was a KGB spy who cared nothing about you or me. I've always thought that you understood your relationship with Irina was nothing more than that. But now that your schoolboy crush on the woman who destroyed your life is preventing you from saving mine, I will have to revise that assessment. (Sloane)  
  
Season 2; Irina may have wanted to save Sydney's life. (Jack)  
  
I doubt that's the case. (Sydney)  
  
Season 1; What? Do you mean did I engineer it somehow? No, Sydney, of course not. (Jack)  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
He had been in his office when they came. Kendall dropped in first, ostensibly to discuss a new development for the mission briefing he was supposed to give later that afternoon, but two other agents were around the corner, and more were on standby with tranquilizers at each of the exits. There was something in Kendall's stance that warned him of what was coming, so he double clicked an icon on his desktop before turning off his monitor and following the Assistant Director out of the office.  
  
"Where are we going?" Jack had asked, eyeing the two beefy agents and recognizing their purpose immediately.  
  
"Interrogation room three," Kendall had replied, the note of challenge in his tone daring Jack to make a break for it, urging him to give any excuse for laying a charge of resisting arrest on him.   
  
If one of the agents guarding a side corridor hadn't drawn his tranq gun when Jack looked past him, he might have been tempted. "Who do you want me to question?" Jack asked falling into step beside Kendall. Appearances only. Kendall wasn't fooled and didn't answer. Jack took comfort in the fact that he wasn't being perp walked through headquarters.  
  
When they reach the cell, however, Jack balked. The chair dominating the center wasn't the ordinary metal folding chair that usually occupied its place. "You are not drugging me," he refused, dropping all pretenses that he wasn't the target. Kendall must have made a signal to the two heavies, because one of them stepped forward and sprayed something in his face. When he awoke, he was on the bunk in Irina's cell.  
  
Looking around, he saw Kendall standing on the other side of the glass. Jack's eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together. He didn't know if he'd been drugged while he was out, and he wasn't going risk talking.  
  
"You failed the first test, Jack," Kendall said after a few moments of exchanging glares. "An innocent agent would have agreed to sit down."  
  
Jack bit down on his first retort that he hadn't been an innocent agent in over twenty years. "Everyone has secrets, Kendall."  
  
"Sure, Jack, but most folk don't have secrets that are felonies." Jack continued to return a stony glare, but he made no verbal response. "Jack, I urge you to cooperate with me. Tell us where you were on November twenty third."  
  
"I was at home," Jack lied, easing his mind that at least he wasn't under any compulsion to speak the truth yet. The date given, however, was less than reassuring. "And no, I haven't any witnesses. My only company was a bottle of bourbon." Given his patterns, it would almost have been more suspicious for him to _have_ an alibi on the date in question. The idea of securing one had been discussed and rejected. After Will and Sydney had both confronted him in the same bar, he'd decided his schedule must be too predictable and had begun to do his drinking alone. It gave him a convenient time window where he wasn't expected anywhere.  
  
"We have reason to believe you were Mexico."  
  
_Shit_.  
  
"What sort of reason?"  
  
Kendall opened a folder that he'd been holding tucked under one arm. He seemed to consider what he was looking at for a moment, then dropped something that might have been a small memo or a photograph into the slot that would allow Jack to have it. Jack rose from his cot and opened the slot on his side, drawing out the surveillance photo. He said nothing.  
  
When it became obvious he wasn't going to comment, Kendall broke the silence. "That was taken from the security camera in a restraunt in Mexico City. I expect you know the name of it as well as I do." Los Gonzalez Hermanos. Not the most imaginative name that Gonzalez brothers could have come up with for their establishment, but the food was good. Irina said their salsa dip was the best in world. She'd made him try it, reaching across the table to insert the salsa loaded tortilla chip into his mouth.  
  
That moment was immortalized in the picture held in his hand.  
  
"Do you make a habit of reviewing the security footage of Mexican restraunts or were you tipped off about this? I suggest you consider your source." If Sloane or someone associated with Sydney's disappearance was trying to get him out of the way, it was possible they'd believe it was forged.  
  
Kendall was not amused. "As it happens, Jack, we _were_ reviewing the security footage of that Mexican restraunt. You happened to be there a half hour before a guns trading deal was scheduled to begin. The surveillance crews were doing a scan to see if any of the players had shown up yet. The recognition software flagged Derevko."  
  
"Crap." Such a small word to express everything wrapped up in the mild explicative.  
  
"She's number six on the CIA's most wanted, Jack. What were you doing there with her?"  
  
Jack's eyes narrowed. "I was having a date with my wife, what does it look like I was doing?"  
  
Kendall slammed an open palm against the glass separating them in frustration. "Dammit, Jack! This is serious! They want to charge you with treason!"  
  
Jack did not reply, only continued to glare at Kendall. Inwardly, he felt his heart clench. A brief recap reel of all his crimes over the past twenty years flashed momentarily through his mind and he knew the judge would not be lenient with him. That he was innocent of the stated charge hardly mattered.  
  
Kendall sighed, further evidence of his irritation with Jack's lack of cooperation. "Fine, Jack. Rot in there." He turned to leave.  
  
"I'll speak to Ben," Jack conceded.  
  
Jack wasn't sure what reaction he expected from Kendall, but the one he got wasn't it. "What is it with you and your family only talking to certain people?! Dammit, Jack, you know the whole Agency will know what you said in a few hours anyway!"  
  
Perversely, Kendall's outburst reassured him. Jack raised a steel-coloured eyebrow and calmly repeated, "I'll speak to Ben." The point, after all, was not to keep information from the Agency. The point was to assert some control on the situation. Irina had understood that.  
  
That, and Ben was infinitely easier to talk to than Kendall. Kendall was an ass.  
  
Kendall left, muttering under his breath. About a half hour later, Ben Devlin arrived in front of Jack's cell. "Jack," Devlin said, his disappointment obvious not only in his voice, but also his expression and stance. They had been friends once, but Jack knew that would be the wrong card to play now.   
  
"Ben," Jack returned neutrally. He considered several opening statements for his defense and rejected them all. "What do you want to know?"  
  
"Let's start with why you were meeting with Irina Derevko. Give me that cock and bull about dating your wife, Jack, and I will hand you to the executioner myself." There was nothing in his delivery that belied the impression that Devlin thought he was dealing with a traitor.  
  
Truth takes time. Irina had said that a lot, to both him and Sydney, while she was trying to earn back their trust. He hadn't thought he would ever look at it from her side. But he was finding an uncomfortable number of parallels already. He was even in the same damned glass cage.  
  
Jack met Ben's condemning gaze unflinchingly. "Sydney's alive. Irina is helping me find her."  
  
Something changed in Ben's eyes, and the Director was suddenly impossible to read. "When did you begin contact with Irina Derevko? Who initiated the correspondence and how?"  
  
Jack searched his former friend's eyes, trying to get some sense of where he stood. The fact that he couldn't gave him an unexpected stab of uncertainty. "At Sydney's funeral. A man dressed as one of the pallbearers passed me a slip of paper with a phone number on it. I recognized Irina's handwriting and called. We arranged a meet in Tokyo in three days. Six days later, we met in a bar in India. We had established the location and code when we had the mission together there."  
  
Surprise cracked through Devlin's mask. "I thought you still hated her then."  
  
"I did at the beginning. Ever seen a couple going through divorce, Ben?"  
  
The question was as much to keep Devlin too off-balance to replace his walls as because Jack had a point to make. It succeeded. Jack read confusion in Ben's expression. "Yeah."  
  
"Irina and I were worse. Frankly, I'm surprised Sydney didn't shoot us both and do the mission alone. I wouldn't have blamed her if she had; lectured her, yes, but blamed her, no. But she didn't and having your life saved twice in one day by the woman you've sworn to despise does tend to lessen your ire marginally. We ended the mission in a truce, and that's when we arranged the location and contact protocol."  
  
"Why? She was in CIA custody. You could meet her whenever you wanted to." Devlin's expression gave away enough to show he was both suspicious and curious.  
  
Jack ran a hand through his hair. "From the very first day she walked in, what was the one thing I have always maintained about Irina Derevko's purpose at the CIA?"  
  
"That she wanted something," Devlin answered immediately.  
  
Jack nodded. "And once she got what she wanted, whatever it was, she would have no reason to stay. I never doubted that she had an exit strategy."  
  
"Did you have sex with her?"  
  
The question came so bluntly and from nowhere that Jack could not cover his surprise. "Did I what?"  
  
Devlin's expression was closed off again. "It was a straightforward question, Jack. Were you and Irina Derevko intimate? In Panama?"  
  
Jack felt his blood pressure escalate and forced himself to calm. He never blushed, so he was safe from that tell. He maintained eye contact and let none of his anxiety show. That question would break everything, take away any credibility he might hope to have. It had to be a bluff. If there was evidence, it would have appeared before now. "Of course not."  
  
He felt he should add in something along the lines of 'I'm not stupid' but feared that it would not only be too much like the lady who doth protest too much, but patently untrue as well.   
  
Devlin nodded, not necessarily in belief, but in acknowledgement that Jack had given an answer. "Where is she now?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"How could we contact her?"  
  
"You can't."  
  
Devlin shook his head. "Jack, you have to cooperate."  
  
Jack's stance closed into mulish stubbornness. "I am."  
  
"Give up Irina Derevko."  
  
"No."  
  
Devlin's eyebrows shot up. "No?"  
  
Jack shook his head. "No. She's looking for Sydney, which is more than this Agency is doing."  
  
Devlin closed his eyes and apparently counted to ten, because it was that many seconds before he opened them again. "Sydney's dead, Jack."  
  
Jack turned his back on his old friend, so he couldn't see the defeat that suddenly overwhelmed him. "Leave, Ben."  
  
"Jack."  
  
Jack turned back toward him, anger replacing the defeat of a moment before. "As long as you believe my daughter is dead, the best you can possibly believe of me is that Irina has duped me again."  
  
For a second, he saw it in Ben's eyes before the mask took shape again. For a second, Jack's eyes reflected the same bleak look he'd seen. "That is what you think," Jack observed.  
  
They stared at each other for a full minute without a word passing between them, neither willing to drop their stoic silence first. Devlin broke first. "It is either that, or Sydney's death caused you to loose touch with reality."  
  
Jack's only response was a small shift of his jaw.   
  
Devlin nodded, as if he had said or done something significant. "Good night, Jack."  
  
-----------------------------------  
  
Judy Barnett was his next visitor. Her welcome was more than a little hostile. "I assure you, Dr. Barnett, that my grip on reality was not sundered by my daughter's apparent death," he said in lieu of a greeting. He did not rise from his seat on the bunk, nor even look at her after his first glance confirmed her identity.  
  
"How long did it take you to compose that opening remark, Jack?" she asked, unperturbed. "Was it designed to start the session on a confrontational tone, determine how much your previous interviews have influenced the decision to send me here, or establish that you believe your daughter is alive?"  
  
Jack pressed his lips together and did not shift his gaze toward her. It would be better all around for him to simply not talk. Though she frequently misread him, she did occasionally have a gem of insight, and that was more than he was willing to risk. The very last thing he needed was for the staff psychologist to determine that his relationship with Irina Derevko was other than a professional alliance to determine the location of their missing daughter.  
  
"Jack," she probed again, "tell me why you think Sydney is alive."  
  
This was another thing he could not divulge. While the video would prove his point, it would also establish Sydney as a freelance assassin. Not something the CIA would take kindly. But he had to clear up the misconception of 'belief' versus 'fact'. "I do not 'think' she's alive, Doctor, I know she is," he said, recognizing even as he did that it was a worse than weak argument. He should have stuck to his original plan to keep silent.  
  
"How?" she prompted.  
  
He shook his head.  
  
"Do you 'know', Jack, or do you simply want to believe that she's alive?"  
  
For the first time this interview, he met her eyes with an angry glare. "I _know_."  
  
Barnett smiled encouragingly, "Tell me how you know, then."  
  
Jack looked at the floor again, swearing to himself not to speak another word.  
  
"During our very first session, Agent Bristow, I said that you were a man so skilled in deception that you were in danger of deceiving even yourself. After a year of covert association with Irina Derevko, I expect that assessment has only become more true."  
  
It was with more difficulty than he was willing to admit that he did not ask 'What has Irina to do with my deceiving myself?' The answer was obvious, anyway. Had he asked, he would have played right into Barnett's trap. 'You tell me,' she would have said, and he'd be back to staring at the floor with even more ground lost.  
  
Over the next few minutes, Barnett introduced a few more leading questions and statements, each one a little easier to ignore than the last. Eventually, she lost patience talking to the wall and left. Jack congratulated himself on his victory.  
  
----------------------------------------------  
  
Kendall returned after Barnett. Jack immediately recognized the 'bad cop' routine and refused to cooperate as a matter of principle. The accusation that Marshall had found a program on his computer that had sent a large amount of data to an outside server then overwrote all the local copies with garbage was met with silence. In fact, during the entire interview, Jack never said a word.  
  
-----------------------------------------------  
  
Weiss was apparently elected as the 'good cop'. "Hey, Jack," the young agent greeted him cheerfully when the gates stopped clanking.  
  
"Agent Weiss," Jack said, "I will say one thing, and one thing only. Everything I have done was in an effort to find my daughter. Including supplying Irina with information that I will no longer be able to use."  
  
Weiss nodded, seeming to believe him, but that might just be Weiss's version of a mask. Jack didn't know the man very well. Of course, Weiss had been one of Sydney's friends, so he may very well believe it in truth. Vaughn, at least, had understood there was nothing sacred if Jack thought his daughter was threatened. "So," Weiss drew out the word, "you think you'll be in here a while?"  
  
Jack scowled. "Don't patronize me."  
  
"Wouldn't dream of it, sir."  
  
There was an awkward silence during which Weiss wouldn't look at him. Eventually, though, he did, and picked up more or less where they had left off. "I expect you don't need me to tell you that unless you give us some leads on Derevko, you're not leaving there."  
  
"I don't have to tell you a thing about Irina."  
  
Weiss made an indifferent shrug. "We could make you."  
  
Jack gave an almost imperceptible smile as he slowly shook his head. "Not legally. She's my wife."  
  
The expression on Weiss's face was priceless, worth the all the flack that bombshell would cause. His only regret was that Kendall hadn't been in the room to hear it, too. "Your ex-wife," Weiss tried to correct him, in obvious denial.  
  
"My wife. It's still legal. I never annulled it, never divorced her."  
  
"My God, why not?" The honest reaction was refreshing. Jack decided he liked Weiss.  
  
"For the first twenty years, it was because I thought she was dead, and because I had appearances to keep up for Sydney. When I found out she was alive," Jack tried to think of how to explain it without sounding either masochistic or . . . unprofessional. "It seemed like cheating."  
  
That was apparently the wrong way to put it. Weiss gave him a look that could only be described as 'weird'. "Hang on," Weiss held up a hand, shook his head as if to clear it, opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again. "You are Jack Bristow, right? The guy who plays fast and loose with every law, rule, and guideline the CIA is supposed to adhere to? You expect me to believe cheating bothers you?"  
  
Yes, Jack decided, he did like Eric Weiss. Jack smirked. "Normally, no. But with Irina, all bets are off. Up is down, right is wrong, and fair is cheating."  
  
"All's fair in love and war?" Weiss quipped and it was obvious he regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth. His eyes went round, and he glanced at Jack as if expecting him to somehow smite him through the glass wall.  
  
Jack merely raised an eyebrow. "Essentially."  
  
Weiss looked satisfactorily smited.


	3. The Middle: CIA

Title: Checkered Past  
  
Summary: Jack's sins catch up to him. Set between seasons 2 and 3.  
  
Spoilers: through the first episode of season 3.  
  
Disclaimer: Alias and associated characters obviously aren't mine. ABC and JJ Abrams hold that honour.  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Season 3; I know that you were imprisoned for making contact with your ex-wife. You went to Irina Derevko for help to find Sydney. Now, I wouldn't have believed that you would ally yourself with a woman you vowed you'd never trust again. (Sloane)  
  
Season 2; Yes, passport stamps, plane tickets, enough to withstand a cursory inquiry. This is anything but cursory. I did not kill Emily Sloane, but I do have secrets. (Jack)  
  
Season 1; There are a few things we need to talk about and, quite frankly, you scare me, so I'd rather talk about them in a public place. (Will)  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Agent Blackstone was a surveillance operative. He was field trained, but his work was mostly done in a van several blocks away from whatever operation was going down. He preferred it that way. Less chance of getting shot and all.   
  
It was a standard op, nothing fancy. Didn't even need any of Flinkman's toys for today's assignment. All they were there to do was watch and record, gather the intel so the 'real' field agents could stop the trade that was about to be negotiated and arranged. Simple, he could do it in his sleep.  
  
The tap into the restraunt's security system was a piece of cake, and, just for fun, he began running the recognition software early. If there were going to be any surprises, it wouldn't hurt to have forewarning. It was shaping up to be a very boring operation and the one extra screen to keep an eye on wouldn't be an issue. Seemed a shame to have the resources and not use them.  
  
He never dreamed that he might flush out the CIA's sixth most wanted in a little backstreet restraunt in Mexico City.  
  
She was sitting at a table in the back, her profile to the security camera. She was sitting with a man, grey hair, suit, probably in his fifties, vaguely familiar looking. Blackstone ran the software on him next, hoping to find a match in the archives to determine which syndicate Derevko was dealing with.  
  
Before the result returned, though, she scooped a chip into the salsa dip and reached across the table, feeding it to the man. Blackstone's eyes widened in surprise and he reclassified the dinner from a negotiation (his first assumption, since that's what the arms smugglers were in the restraunt to do) to a date. This was better. Business partners could provide information, lovers provided leverage.  
  
His computer beeped, and he pulled up the screen to find out the identity of her companion. And froze.  
  
Jonathan D. Bristow. CIA Agent, out of Los Angeles.  
  
That couldn't be a good thing.  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Benjamin Devlin shut off the VCR, and rubbed his eyes. Looking down at the file that had arrived with the tape, the photograph of a woman reaching across a table to place a chip into a man's waiting mouth stared accusingly back at him. Had the woman been anyone else, he'd have been delighted with the happy image depicted. Had the man been anyone else, he'd be elated by the possibilities. Had they both been anyone one else, the picture would be unremarkable, just a couple on a date.  
  
But the man was Jack, and the woman was Derevko. And that made it sinister.   
  
"Dammit, Jack, why is it always you?" he muttered under his breath before picking up the phone on his desk and punching in Kendall's extension. Devlin didn't even wait for a greeting, beginning to speak as soon as he hear the click of the phone lifting from its cradle. "We may have a mole."  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
"Bristow?" Kendall repeated, not exactly disbelieving that the agent in question was capable of it. "With Derevko?" That was the part that was hard to swallow. The man's hatred of her was legendary. While it might have seemed, towards the end of her imprisonment, that the two had begun to get along again, all bets were off once she escaped on his watch during Panama. Made him look the fool again, and Bristow was not one to take that sort of thing lightly. She'd done it to him twice, he wouldn't let it happen a third time.  
  
Several minutes later found him in Jack's office. Devlin and Kendall had both agreed on two things. First, he should be taken into custody immediately. Jack had a disturbing talent of having information he shouldn't. If he caught wind that he was under suspicion for this, he would disappear and they'd never hear from him again. If anyone could vanish from the face of the earth, it would be Jack.  
  
They other thing they decided on was to test how guiltily he responded. Jack was nothing if not unconventional. That he was speaking with a terrorist didn't necessarily mean he was working for or even with her. His loyalty may still possibly be with the CIA. If he went quietly, if he cooperated with them, they might be able to convince the NSA he wasn't a threat.  
  
As he made some excuse about a presentation Jack would never give, Kendall studied him obliquely, trying to see if there were any signs that the man in front of him had spent at least one evening being video taped dining with Irina Derevko. There were, expectedly, none.  
  
When they stepped out of his office, to where a half dozen agents surreptitiously watched Jack for any indication he was about to make a break for it, Kendall sensed a change in him. And, indeed, he was eyeing the two closest guards who waited to subdue him should it prove necessary. "Where are we going?" he asked, looking toward the exit.  
  
"Interrogation room three," Kendall replied, making no attempt hide a purpose the man already suspected.   
  
Bristow stole another look down the most promising escape route, but the guard positioned there drew out his tranquilizer, letting Bristow see it. Tranqs meant they wanted to bring in someone alive, but they also meant there would be no hesitation to shoot. They were also not standard issue for agents standing in hallways. Jack would know they were just for him.  
  
"Who do you want me to question?" Jack asked, visibly dropping any intention he might have had of running. Kendall didn't bother to reply. He was trying to determine whether it was a positive sign that Jack was coming quietly, or a bad one that it had taken a sighting of the tranquilizer guns to get him to do so.  
  
Even Kendall was taken aback by the make of the chair in the interrogation room, but Jack's reaction was telling. He did not even make it completely through the doorway before he stopped. By the mulish look, Kendall knew attempting to question him would prove fruitless until he calmed down. He waved for one of the agents to subdue the prisoner.  
  
The hours it took for him to wake up would give the rest of them time to fully review the case, or at least get a good jump on it. Kendall wanted to, at the very least, _see_ the video before he confronted Jack about it. Even if Bristow had cooperated, he'd just be sitting there waiting under guard until they decided the next move.  
  
The initial briefing of the situation included five men. Devlin presented the data, as much as there was of it, to an audience consisting of Kendall, Dixon, Weiss, and Marshall.   
  
"Three days ago," Devlin began, "an operative of this office of the CIA was observing an arms negotiation between known enemies of the United States. The deal was arranged to take place in a restraunt in Mexico City at 1900 hours local time. Twenty minutes before that, this was recorded at Los Hermanos Gonzalez, the restraunt in question." The lights dimmed marginally and the CIA logo on the briefing displays were replaced with grainy, black and white security footage of what was obviously a moderately successful restraunt.  
  
Though no one at the table really needed the commentary, Devlin's narration continued. "If I could direct your attention to the table at the top left corner, I believe you can all recognize the seriousness of what you are seeing. The agent was not as well versed with these two players as we are, so he was required to use facial recognition software to realize what we can see in a glance. A senior agent of the Central Intelligence Agency in the person of Jonathan Bristow was meeting with number six on the very same Agency's most wanted list. A man on the very task force assigned to bring her in, the man who had once led that task force, was witnessed by a reliable source and recorded meeting with Irina Derevko."  
  
On the screen, Bristow's image sipped at his soda and looked blandly across the table, wearing a poker face anyone around the table could easily recognize. Derevko said something, and Jack did something that only Devlin had ever seen before. He laughed. It didn't last very long, and he shortly picked up his butter knife and pointed it at her, but despite the brandished weapon, Jack Bristow looked more relaxed than any of them had seen in a very long time.  
  
"Marshall, I want lip dubbing software to figure out what they are saying. Weiss, you are going to look for any evidence that this is not the first time they've met. I want you to investigate Jack Bristow back as far as when Derevko first got away. I want to know everyone he's talked to and why. Every plane trip he's taken; where to, who he met. If it was a CIA mission, I want to know if he did anything unusual that might indicate he's a double. Delegate as necessary. Kendall, I want you to talk to Jack, see if he has an explanation for this. Dixon, you and I have known him the longest. We'll be in Control, watching Bristow's cell while Kendall speaks with him." Devlin sighed, "I have already sent the preliminary report to Langley. I expect people from Washington to arrive probably late tonight or early tomorrow. If Jack's going to survive this, he's going to have to give up Derevko's location before they arrive."  
  
There was a small stunned silence following their assignments, but they slowly nodded acknowledgment and dispersed. As Weiss and Dixon left the room together, Kendall heard Weiss asking, "You don't think . . . they wouldn't be shacking up together, right? He wouldn't do that again, would he?"  
  
Dixon shook his head, but Kendall thought the motion was too deliberate to be convincing. "Jack knows better than to trust her," was the rather inconclusive insight Marcus was able to offer. He even sounded uncertain about that.  
  
"Right," Weiss agreed, just as unconvinced. "Ever seen him laugh like that before?"  
  
"No."  
  
As they moved away, Devlin came up beside him, also having been listening to the exchange. "Not since before Sydney died, and even then it was rare," Devlin answered the final question in his own experience. "For a while, after Laura turned out to be a spy, I didn't think he ever would again."  
  
Kendall looked down at the shorter Director, surprised. "You think they're sleeping together?"  
  
Devlin didn't look at him, staring unseeingly ahead. "God, I hope not. She already broke him once."  
  
"But if you had to guess," Kendall pressed. "You think they are."  
  
Devlin did meet his eyes this time. "Don't put words in my mouth." There a brief pause during which they stared each other down. "Yes," Devlin eventually agreed. "Jack," he looked away briefly, then turned back. "Jack loved his daughter. But even where Sydney was concerned, he could keep his emotions so tightly under wrap that you'd never know he worried about her unless he wanted you to. You saw him at her funeral. Stood tall, poker faced, and never shed a tear."  
  
Devlin stopped talking, but Kendall sensed he wasn't done, so he said nothing.  
  
"Only Derevko can make him react emotionally. You saw his outbursts while she was in custody. It wasn't threats to Sydney that made him act that way, it was the fact that his ex-wife was involved. He loved her passionately once. When she was taken in her cell, he hated her passionately. They say love and hate are the two sides of the same coin, and we know they're not actively trying to kill each other right now."  
  
Kendall stared at him in astonishment. "You can't possibly think he loves her."  
  
Devlin looked away. "I don't know what to think."  
  
He shook his head in denial. "Maybe if it weren't Jack Bristow. I don't think Bristow knows how to love anymore."  
  
"He loved Laura."  
  
"Laura and Derevko are completely different entities."  
  
Devlin looked at him once more, waiting until he had captured Kendall's full attention before saying clearly, "I know that. You know that." A pregnant pause. "But does Jack know that?"  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Kendall proved to be useless in extracting Jack's cooperation. Devlin himself was moderately successful, but his interview ended badly and he concluded that it would take a few days before Jack would be willing to talk to him again. Barnett was only marginally better than Kendall, though both Dixon and Devlin, watching from the Control room, agreed that Jack was hiding something.  
  
By the time Barnett gave up, Marshall had new information.  
  
The same people gathered in the same conference room they had occupied just over an hour earlier. Marshall put in the tape, and subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen, blue for what Jack said and pink for what Irina said.  
  
_Irina was sitting at the table first, reading her menu. After a few moments, she looked up expectantly, and smiled as Jack approached and sat down across from her. "Safe trip?" she asked.  
  
"Fine," Jack agreed. "My watchdog didn't even know I left the house."  
  
She nodded. "Good."  
  
A waiter approached, supplying them with chips and salsa, then leaving. Irina smiled. "This place serves the best salsa in the world, Jack. Here, have some." She used a tortilla chip to spoon up a bite's worth of dip, and reached across the table. "Open up, Jack."  
  
Reluctantly, Jack opened his mouth and let her feed him. There was no indication of what he thought of the salsa as he chewed then swallowed. "Well?" Irina prompted.  
  
"I wouldn't say it was the 'best in the world'," Jack critiqued. "The best in the city possibly, but there's a place in Calcutta that has a very good dip. I'll need to introduce you to it sometime."  
  
Irina smiled. "I'd like that."  
  
The waiter returned and they gave their orders, both speaking in Spanish. When he had gone again, Irina asked, "Have you been sleeping better? You look less dead."  
  
Jack didn't need words to express that he found her comment less than complimentary. "There is significantly less jet lag between here and LA than there is between Africa and LA."  
  
_  
Devlin momentarily paused the tape, and he looked around the table. "I want people working on this. Jack met her in Africa. I need to know when and where. I want surveillance footage if I can get it. I want people going through our own security tapes. Find out when he was looking the most exhausted and see if you can link it to any extracurricular activities. Dixon?"   
  
Dixon stood. "I'm on it." He left the room. After a few minutes of waiting, he returned, nodded confirmation that the analysts had been set on the trail. Devlin pressed the play button on his remote as Dixon resumed his seat.  
  
_"So you're not sleeping better?" Irina pressed. "Jack, you need to sleep."  
  
Jack was saved from answering by the arrival of their drinks. He immediately took a sip of his soda. Irina watched him, a small smile on her lips. Jack returned the look blandly. "The salsa was killing you, wasn't it?" she asked.  
  
He laughed briefly, then picked up his butter knife and pointed it at her. "You are a sadistic woman, Irina."  
  
"Thank you, Jack. You always have such sweet things to say about me."  
  
"Eat your salsa, Irina. You have a drink to go with it now." They fell quiet as they both began attacking the plate of chips and salsa dip. After a while, Jack broke the silence. "I take it you haven't any news?"  
  
"I'd have told you first thing if I had. Same for you?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Another silence, longer this time. "We'll find her, Jack."  
  
"I know."  
  
The third extended silence was broken by the arrival of their meals.  
_  
  
The picture stilled again and the lights in the CIA conference room undimmed slightly. For a moment, nobody spoke. "It appears," Dixon ventured when it became obvious nobody else wanted to make the first remark, "that Jack was telling the truth when he said they were looking for Sydney."  
  
"That 'her' could be anybody," Kendall disagreed. Though no one challenged it, neither did any of them - including Kendall - appear entirely convinced. Devlin darkened the room again and restarted the video. They watched the couple wordlessly eat and ignored the arrival of the gun traders entirely.   
  
Derevko's eyes, however, tracked toward the pair of men entering the restraunt and nudged Jack under the table. Her eyes met his then shifted toward the newcomers. Jack dropped his napkin on the floor and used the opportunity to steal a glance in the direction Irina had indicated. After recovering the napkin, he used it dab at his mouth, hiding any low volume words he may have said.  
  
Derevko covered a cough, and they both (though not in any way that might have indicated they did it on purpose) turned in their chairs so that they almost had their backs to the security camera. Certainly, their faces were now obstructed. They finished their meal quickly, left cash on the table, and made their unhurried and perfectly natural exit from the building, keeping their faces turned away from both the camera and the men.  
  
This time, when Devlin stopped the tape, the CIA logo returned to the screens, and the room lights came back to full brightness.  
  
"I want to know where they went next," Devlin said. "Their business must have been conducted elsewhere. What we just saw wasn't worth him leaving LA for. But first, Marshall, you said you found something else?"  
  
"Uh, yeah," Marshall stood, looking nervous, which was normal. "While I was running the dubbing software, which takes a kinda long time, especially since they weren't facing exactly at the camera, I was checking the outgoing server logs where I found a large data dump originating from Agent Bristow's computer at a time after he'd already been taken in for questioning. I thought that was, well, sorta odd, since you can't really use ftp when you're unconscious except for I did it once when I was sleep walking but Agent Bristow was locked up, so he couldn't even get to a . . . right. So I remotely accessed his computer, and I found that he had begun running a program just before he was arrested. Um, I'm not really sure what he sent out because he overwrote the original files and the log files with long string of dashes until the overwritten file got to be fifty megs. None of the files he replaced was larger than that so I can't reconstruct even parts of them."  
  
"Where did he send these files to?" Devlin asked.  
  
"An IP address that used to belong to SD-6. But the data was already gone when I got there. I tried to see if I could rebuild the files, but they changed that to dashes, too, before deleting it. The server logs were also wiped clean, so I couldn't follow it out any further. The only other thing on the server were 47 pictures of Sydney as a little girl in a folder called 'ourdaughter', no space, all lowercase." Marshall paused briefly. "She was a really cute kid."  
  
"Thank you, Marshall," Devlin said, cutting in before he go off on a new tangent. "Kendall, I want you to try talking to Jack again. At this point, your best bet is probably to get him angry enough to snap at you. If that doesn't work, Weiss, you're up."  
  
"Me?" Weiss repeated, surprised.   
  
"Yes, I want Dixon observing, and you're the only one left besides him who hasn't pissed Jack off yet today. Try not to."  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Kendall's questioning was an unqualified disaster. Devlin decided to keep him out of all future interviews with Jack. Weiss's attempt . . . well that was a disaster, too, but in an entirely different way.  
  
It started out moderately promising. He spoke to Weiss at any rate, offered without even being asked, the intel that he had uploaded the files about Sydney's search to Derevko. Then the whole investigation went to Hell.  
  
"She's my wife."  
  
Weiss tried to save Jack, tried to rectify the situation. "Your ex-wife."  
  
Jack was hell-bent on self-destruction, though. "My wife. It's still legal. I never annulled it, never divorced her."  
  
In Control, Devlin, Kendall, and Dixon all exchanged wide-eyed looks of dismay. Devlin sat down on a desktop in the cramped room and rubbed his eyes. "He just killed himself. The NSA won't let Derevko's self-proclaimed husband go."  
  
"God," Kendall cursed. He looked like he wanted to expand upon that, but nothing further managed to reach his tongue.  
  
"It gets worse," Dixon said, from where he was still monitoring the conversation.  
  
"How can it possibly?" Kendall demanded.  
  
Dixon hesitated, then looked at them briefly before turning his gaze back to the screen where Weiss was now retreating. "Weiss said 'All's fair in love and war'," another pause as he met first Kendall's eyes, then Devlin's. "Jack agreed."   
  
Another beat. But whatever Dixon was opening his mouth to say was lost as the door swung open and Weiss charged in. "He's insane! I mean, I knew he was insane when he did the thing in Madagascar, but now I think he's really certifiable. He's in love with Derevko!"  
  
"Or at war with her," Kendall stepped in, apparently unable to accept that Bristow was capable of the emotion.  
  
"Or both," Dixon said, causing everyone to look at him in surprise. He raised his eyebrows, as if the attention wasn't expected after a comment like that. "To people like Jack and Derevko, is there really that much of a difference? I expect they have a lot more in common than Jack and Laura ever did."  
  
"No," Devlin disagreed. "Jack changed. When Laura died. The Jack Bristow in that cell has nothing in common with the girl, but the Jack Bristow who married her did." Devlin did not, could not, deny that Jack and Derveko had an uncomfortably large number of similarities now. He would have liked to. He found it terrifying that in the twenty plus years since a college literature professor drove off a bridge to be resurrected as a Russian spy, her CIA husband had morphed into a person who _could_, conceivably, love the Russian spy.  
  
Assuming, of course, that the Russian spy and the betrayed husband were still capable of love. An assumption that Kendall, for one, refused to make. Devlin himself wasn't sure whether to pray Kendall was wrong, or to pray that he was right.  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
"Jack, I have annulment papers," Devlin began, holding the partially filled out forms up for the prisoner to see. Jack looked, but only to dismiss them without so much as a word. "Jack, sign these, Marshall can overwrite last night and now with a loop of you sitting there. The NSA will never know."  
  
Jack's brown gaze met Devlin's eyes calmly, almost too calmly. "If I was going to annul my marriage I would have done so when I hated her."  
  
"Jack," Devlin warned, though what he was warning, he wasn't sure how to put in words.  
  
"I'm not signing it, Ben." The tone was factual and there was no arguing with it. Devlin knew from experience that doing so would be wasted effort.  
  
He tried anyway. "Dammit, Jack, being Derevko's ex was one thing. It meant she duped you, that you were her _victim_. She destroyed your life, anyone would be willing to testify to that. It even gives you some maneuvering room when you get caught irrationally endangering CIA missions while trying to frame her."  
  
Jack met his glare evenly, taking no visible offense to the truth, and waiting for Devlin to finish.  
  
Devlin complied, "But as her current and legal husband? Jack, they'll crucify you. She's a terrorist. The CIA's sixth most wanted. You can't be willingly married to her and expect not to be made an example of."  
  
"I never said I expected not to be made an example of."  
  
"Sign the damned papers, Jack."  
  
Jack glared. "No."  
  
At least he was getting angry now, Devlin took hope in that. Though he hated himself for it, he took a low shot. "Tell me, Jack, is she your wife, or are you her husband all by yourself?"  
  
"Are you asking if we mutually acknowledge that we are still married?" Jack requested clarification, his eyes hiding something that Devlin couldn't decipher. He suddenly didn't want to know, but he was already in this far.  
  
"Yes, that's what I'm asking."  
  
Jack's brief temper had abated, and he gave a small smile that was impossible to interpret. "We both acknowledge that American marriage laws are stupid and that we have been legally married for thirty-two years. We even exchanged anniversary gifts this year. I gave her a necklace with C-4 in it, and she gave me a tie with a recording device hidden behind the label."  
  
"You gave your wife C-4 for your anniversary?" Devlin could help asking despite his better judgment on the entire affair.  
  
He smirked, looking almost happy for the first time in months. "No, Ben, I gave my wife a necklace for our anniversary," he corrected primly. "I may have been out of the game for twenty years, but I am not a complete heel."  
  
"A necklace that could decapitate her."  
  
"Well, I expect she would have the sense not to activate it while she was wearing it."  
  
It was then that Devlin realized that the gifts were not meant to be used against each other. They were intended as op tech. "You gave C-4 to a terrorist for your anniversary?" Though the words differed only slightly from the first question, this one came out harsh and accusatory rather than surprised and bemused.  
  
Jack seemed somewhat taken aback by the sudden change in tone and he closed down. "I hardly think Irina has any difficulty getting her hands on a small C-4 charge," he defended his action coldly.  
  
"Apparently, she has even less difficulty than I thought, what with employees of the United States Government giving them to her as gifts."  
  
Jack's eyes flashed in anger. "I should hope I'm the only one. You're starting to sound like Kendall, Ben."  
  
"No, Jack, if were becoming like Kendall, I'd be trying to find your angle, not begging you to see sense and annul the marriage that everyone but you understands isn't real."  
  
"It is real!" the vehemence of the assertion took Devlin by surprise, but he didn't let that show.  
  
"So you are sleeping with her, then? That's what husbands and wives do."  
  
For a moment, Jack continued to scowl, but the anger was draining. He looked away. "No, of course not," he said in the scathing tone that Devlin recognized meant 'yes, but I'm not going to say so in front of the cameras.'  
  
With that admission, Devlin gave up. Jack was lost. The only thing he could do for his former friend was to arrange things so he would avoid the death penalty.  
  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Dixon was somber when Devlin entered Control. "He's gone," Devlin said unnecessarily.   
  
"I'm sorry," Dixon said, and it struck Devlin that was what people say when a man's family or friend dies. "You tried your best. Derevko knew exactly how to play him."  
  
"And we let her. She seduced him again right under our noses. I saw it happening, we all did. But Jack knew what she was, we thought he had sense enough to let well enough alone, to not fall into the same trap again. We forget sometimes that Jack is still human."  
  
Dixon studied him intently. "You think that's why she turned herself in? To recruit Jack?"  
  
Devlin shook his head. "No. She wanted Sydney at first. Then Jack proved to be easier than anticipated."  
  
"Getting to Sydney is the fastest way to get to Jack. Are you sure he wasn't her primary target from the beginning?"  
  
Devlin looked at Dixon as if seeing him for the first time. His words were dismayed, "If so, we all played directly into her hands, like Jack said we were." He shook his head suddenly. "No. No, if that were her endgame, she wouldn't have escaped with a Rambaldi manuscript and left Jack looking a fool."  
  
"They shared a hotel room that night. He took out her active transmitter. How do you know they didn't plan that together to throw suspicion off Jack?"  
  
Devlin shook his head, "No, that makes no sense. To throw suspicion off, they get risk getting Jack a court martial?"  
  
Dixon nodded, apparently not seeing the ridiculousness of the suggestion. "Yes. It only works because we all know that Jack doesn't play by the books. Who'd be stupid enough to take out a transmitter then let the prisoner escape? We all have a much higher opinion of Jack and Derevko to think they would pull something that obvious. Therefore, she must have pulled the wool over his eyes again."  
  
"You really think that's what happened?"  
  
"No, but it does make a frightening theory."  
  
Devlin nodded. "That it does. Don't tell it to the NSA. Have you stopped looping the video feed?"  
  
"Yes, Jack was nice enough to return to the exact same position, so Marshall will hardly need to do any editing at all. Has he done a lot of missions that required him to fit into a loop?"  
  
Devlin glanced over at him. "He's been a field agent since he was seventeen. One month off when he got married, two months off when Sydney was born, and six months off when he was in Solitary."  
  
Dixon studied Jack's sitting form. "And now he's in prison for being a terrorist."  
  
"The charge hasn't been decided on yet. In all honesty, Marcus, he should have been there a long time ago. Don't ever mistake Jack Bristow for a company man, he's not. Jack has been a loose cannon since Laura died." He paused, waiting for Dixon to look at him. "Jack joined SD-6 knowing what it was. He didn't turn double for us until he found out Sloane recruited Sydney. I said he was a field agent since he was seventeen. I didn't say he spent all of that time working for the good guys. He's run out of second chances, and I think he knows it." 


End file.
